Generally described, computing devices and communication networks can be utilized to exchange information. In a common application, a device can exchange information with other devices via the communication network. For example, a user at a personal computing device can utilize a software browser application to request a Web page or Web application from a server device via the Internet. For another example, a user of a content providing service can utilize a display device (e.g., television, computer, mobile device, smartphone, tablet) to request content (e.g., an audio presentation, video presentation, audiovisual presentation, movie, television show, video, podcast) to be downloaded or streamed from a server device via the Internet to the display device. In a further embodiment, the client devices can transmit a set of data, generally referred to as a data stream, to a network-based device for analysis or additional processing.
Illustratively computing systems can be configured to analyze streaming data received from computing devices. In a common application, the computing devices can provide a stream of data to such a computing system. In turn, the receiving computing system can process the stream of data to determine various features, patterns, statistics, or metrics related to the stream of data. For example, a mobile computing device may continually generate and transmit streaming data that includes location data. Accordingly, the computing system may continually receive the location information data stream and process the received location over the course of several days to determine travel patterns of the user of that mobile computing device.
In another example, computing devices can continually track the occurrence of certain events, such as the occurrence of errors, user-initiated actions, state information, and the like. For example, computing devices can generate a listing of event data, often referred to as a log of events. Additionally, in some embodiment, the computing devices can transmit log data as part of a data stream to a computing system for analysis. The computing system can then analyze the stream of log events to determine various values, patterns, or other metrics that may characterize the events represented in the stream of log events.